MOGADISHU, Somalia — Two dozen babies sat on the laps of their mothers, who dressed in a rainbow of headscarves at the Medina Maternal Child Health Center. They are among Somalia’s luckiest — the first to receive a new vaccine that protects against five dangerous diseases.

With more regions of Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu, at peace for the first time in 20 years, health care workers are expanding vaccination programs and can now access 40 percent of south-central Somalia, where the influence of hard-line Islamic insurgents is highest. Three years ago, health workers could access only 15 percent to 20 percent of that territory.

With one in five Somali children dying before his or her fifth birthday, the international community is rolling out the new five-in-one child vaccine they say will save thousands of lives.

The rollout of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and an influenza known as Hib comes as health leaders on Thursday held the Global Vaccine Summit in the United Arab Emirates, where a six-year plan to eradicate polio was unveiled.

Violence and insecurity cost children dearly when it comes to preventable diseases. Polio remains endemic in only three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. All three experience heavy violence.

In February, gunmen thought to belong to a radical Islamic sect known as Boko Haram shot and killed at least nine women taking part in a polio vaccination drive in northern Nigeria.

In Somalia, efforts by African Union forces have beaten al-Shabab back from areas it once controlled.

As evidence of the improved security, Britain’s foreign secretary traveled to Mogadishu on Thursday to open the British Embassy, the first time Britain has had an embassy in Somalia since 1991, when violence forced an embassy evacuation.

When al-Shabab is forced out, health officials rush in and vaccinate children, said Marthe Everard, the World Health Organization country director for Somalia. After Kenyan forces took the coastal city of Kisumu last year from al-Shabab, health officials vaccinated nearly 13,000 children, but districts around the city remain off-limits.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, speaking at the vaccine’s launch in Mogadishu on Wednesday, said all Somali children deserve the good health that children from rich countries enjoy.

He blamed much of the country’s vaccination problem on al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda-linked militant group that controls much of south-central Somalia and up until August 2011 controlled Mogadishu.

Maryan Qasim Ahmed, the country’s health minister, said al-Shabab kills aid workers who try to better health in south-central Somalia, “so they are contributing to child and infant mortality.”

Al-Shabab distributes false propaganda against vaccines, Everard said, such as claims the vaccines will make girls infertile, or that the vaccines are made by Christian countries. The vaccines are actually made in Indonesia and Pakistan, Muslim countries.

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